Spider Robinson Quotes

Mary Kay is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian. They control information. Don't ever piss one off.

I was a little afraid you might get all macho about not exposing your wife to danger.
I am. I wouldn't want you to accidentally suffer any harm while beating the shit out of me for trying to keep you out of the party. You could forget and hit me on the head, and hurt your knuckles.

It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? That lemming drive you're talking about is there — but there's another kind of drive, another kind of force that's working against it. Or else there wouldn't still be any people and there wouldn't be the words to have this conversation and—" She paused, looked down at herself. "And I wouldn't be here to say them.

Callahan dried his big meaty hands on his apron and cleared his throat with a sound like a bulldozer in pain.

I was putting together a picture of a life that would have depressed anyone with the sensitivity of a rhino. Back when I had first seen her, when her features were alive, she had looked sensitive. Or had that been a trick of the juice?

Hey,” Arethusa said from my right, just past Sally. “What’s wrong with pacifists? Look at Buddhists: they’re nice people.” I gave her my best smile, and got a much better one in trade. Arethusa can smile like a long-distance kiss. I poured her two plastic cups of peach juice from the flask on my bedside table. Lady Sally started to adjust her chair so she could see us both… then left it as it was and spoke past me, to Arethusa’s other body, which opened its eyes politely. “They’re different,” Lady Sally conceded. “They’re honest pacifists. You don’t have to worry about them fighting dirty, because they never fight: they don’t have Jihads or Crusades. The strongest weapon they use is reason; the strongest protest they allow themselves is suicide, and they’re always careful not to let the flames spread. Pacifism of that sort is no more objectionable than belief in astrology or membership in the Flat Earth Society. I was speaking of the kind of pacifists we grew like hothouse flowers in this country fifteen or twenty years ago, and still have all too many of. Pacifist terrorists. The kind who want all wars everywhere to cease and everyone to live in peace… and are prepared to keep blowing up wealthier and less enlightened fellow citizens until that day comes. There’s nothing wrong with wanting wars to stop — but the moment a pacifist uses any weapon but calm speech, he’s a hypocrite. If he’s willing to kill, he’s a psychotic. The only good thing about them as opponents is that it isn’t murder to kill one.

Just as there are Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed.
But one can be converted into the other.

Книги се пишат по най-шашави причини. Някои са написани, за да изплатят ипотека, други — за да спасят света, а трети — просто от нямане какво да се прави. Един от любимите ми анекдоти е за писателя, дето се хванал на бас, че е буквално невъзможно да се напише толкова КОФТИ книга, та да не се намери кой да я издаде. И какво станало по-нататък — писателят взел, че написал най-тъпия и най-шаблонния роман, на който бил способен… И не само успял да го продаде, ами и публиката настояла за над две дузини продължения (Не мога да викажа името на писателя: току-виж наследниците му ме осъдили, а пък не разполагам с документи. Поразпитайте на всяко събиране на фантасти — този анекдот е доста известен.)

Progress is something with no pity, and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew, and spits out things you can't understand, and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money.

Hey Jake. I got an idea.'
'Be gentle with it,' the Doc grinned. 'It's in a strange place.

You can show a dozen guys murderin' each other on TV but you can't ever show two people making love. A naked blade is reckoned to be less obscene than a naked woman.

This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving — and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. This is what it is to be human: to persist.

Some guys step on a rake in the dark, and get mad and go punch somebody. Others step on a rake in the dark, and fall down laughing at themselves. I know which kind of guy I’d rather be. So do my friends.

She hadn’t said it like a joke or hyperbole. “In this country it is,” Arethusa replied seriously, and reached to take the peach juice I gave her, one of her after the other. She smiled at me. “I don’t see why,” Lady Sally said. “Pacifists — and anarchists, and libertarians — specifically repudiate the right of the state to employ armed agents — to protect them from murder, for instance. So shooting one ought to be no worse than a misdemeanor. ‘Disturbing the peace,’ say, or ‘frivolous discharge of a firearm.’ ” “ ‘Unlicensed hunting,’ maybe,” I suggested. “They’re not restricted,” she pointed out. “As long as you eat the meat, and clean up after…” “I’m particular about what I eat,” I said. “But I will kill this bunch. If you can help me track ’em.” “Joseph,” Arethusa said plaintively, “when I decided to love you, I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty. Do you realize we’ve never gone an entire day without you announcing your intention to murder someone?” “People who plant nuclear mines in major population centers?” I said. “You bet I’ll kill them if I get a chance.” “No allowances for good intentions?” “None,” I said firmly. “Even if I stipulate that a world of enforced peace run by something like Weathermen with nukes is a good intention — and I don’t — nobody elected these clowns to do the job. They don’t have the right. Even a tyrant rules by consent of his people, no matter how difficult he makes it for them to withhold it. He rules openly, a fair target for any assassin. But these vermin are worse than a well-poisoner.” She bit her lip. Then she shrugged. “You’re right,” she said, “but I want you to promise me that you’ll give up murdering people once we’re married.

You humans are at least aware of that supreme paradox—that free will exists to an extent for the individual, but disappears in the group—although you can’t work with it.